
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings
A New History of the Ancient Near East
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Narrated by:
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Amanda H. Podany
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By:
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Amanda H. Podany
In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes listeners on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that people faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.
Weavers, Scribes, and Kings creates a tapestry of life stories through which listeners will come to know individuals from many walks of life, and to understand their places within the broad history of events and institutions in the ancient Near East. These stories are preserved on ancient clay tablets, which allow us to trace, for example, the career of a weaver as she advanced to become a supervisor of a workshop, listen to a king trying to persuade his generals to prepare for a siege, and feel the pain of a starving couple and their four young children as they suffered through a time of famine. What might seem at first glance to be a remote and inaccessible ancient culture proves to be a comprehensible world, one that bequeathed to the modern world many of our institutions and beliefs, a fascinating place to visit.
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Insightful look into lives in the Ancient Near East
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Tour de force
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This book is different. It gives a peak to these people’s lives in a way that I feel like I am starting to know them. The authors is genuinely interested in the topic.
It made me wonder how much and what will be available of our lives for future generations. It made me think of trying to preserve my own story.
I hate history, however….
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Clever use of original source material brings the past to life
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Amanda Podany shines the light of day on a random grouping of people whose property deeds or contracts have been buried for three thousand years. From these random and obscure snapshots of inconsequential lives she cobbles together a comprehensive and tightly woven narrative that spans somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 years.
This history is made spectacular due to Podany’s ability to draw from details of daily lives as wide-ranging as the individual weavers, merchants, priestesses and kings, all prospering from trade in fine textiles. These details breathe life into the dawn of human civilization.
I can’t speak highly enough about this revelatory book and Amanda Podany’s contribution to an underrepresented history.
The Life of Cuneiform Script
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Trivial beauty is
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The author uses the large caches of cuneiform tablets that we have unearthed over the last two centuries as the organizing principle, but she doesn't stick to only the royalty, generals and priestesses. She gives us a vibrant picture of the everyday lives of skilled artisans, slaves, and the very scribes whose chronicles have lasted more than 4,000 years.
A note on the narration: the author reads her own book, so there is no faltering over complex ancient names. AND she has a delightful voice with something like the BBC Standard British accent which so soothes American listeners.
Ingeniously organized, impeccably read
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Loved the new discoveries included
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Incredibly detailed, fascinating storytelling
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Awesome and informative!
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